Today's News

Zephyrs pound Isotopes
Pounding out 17 hits and scoring 10 runs wasn’t nearly enough for the Albuquerque Isotopes against the New Orleans Zephyrs Monday.
The Zephyrs came up with 23 hits to win going away, 20-10 at Isotopes Park in the third of a critical four-game set between the two teams.
Nevertheless, the Isotopes will still head into the series finale tonight with a 3-game lead over the Zephyrs in the PCL American Southern division. The finale is scheduled for 6:35 p.m. in Albuquerque.
Just two games separated the two teams heading into the series opener Saturday, but the Isotopes took the first two games by counts of 3-1 and 6-0.
Isotopes starter Fernando Nieve (6-8) gave up seven earned runs, including four homers, in two-plus innings of work Monday. He didn’t record an out in the third inning and allowed three runs, giving the Zephyrs a 7-2 lead at the time.

Ashlynn Bennett of the Los Alamos Aquatomics finished as the third-highest scorer in her age group at the New Mexico Long Course Championship meet.
The state long course championship was July 19-22 at the Farmington Aquatic Center. In all, 22 teams and 446 swimmers took part.
Bennett, swimming in the girls 15-16 age group, picked up victories in the 400-yard freestyle, the 200 freestyle and the 200 butterfly, as well as turning in a runner-up performance in the 200 individual medley and a third-place finish in the 50 butterfly.
As a team, the Aquatomics, who had 23 representatives at the meet, finished 11th among the participating club-level teams.
Among the other top scorers for the Aquatomics were Alex Jaegers, who scored 32 points in the boys 13-14 competition, Ian Jaegers, who had 11 points in boys 10 and under, and Nick Greenfield, Alana Goodwin and Max Corliss, all of whom finished with five points.

Here are the results for the Los Alamos Aquatomics at the New Mexico State Long Course Championship meet July 19-22 (name, division, event, place, time):

The University of New Mexico Lobo volleyball team is hoping to turn an underwhelming showing in the preseason Mountain West poll into some motivation.

The Lobos finished sixth in the preseason poll, released last week. In that poll, the Colorado State University Rams were selected as the favorite, followed by San Diego State and Wyoming.

The Lobos lost three key players off last season's squad — Kelly Williamson, Ashley Rhoades and Allison Buck — that went 16-14 and finished fifth in MW play, losing in the opening round of the conference tournament to Wyoming.

UNM opens its season with the Lobo Classic tournament, which starts Friday.

This season, Lobo head coach Jeff Nelson decided not to pit a younger, less-experienced team like he has this year, against top-shelf opponents like the program has faced in the recent past.

"I think it's perfect for what this team needs," said Nelson, talking about his regular season schedule. "It doesn't feature the Nebraska or the Stanford of the past couple of years, but I don't think we needed to (play them) right now. We are committed to getting our youth confident at playing college volleyball."

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — Diana Nyad ended her fourth attempt in nearly 35 years to swim across the Straits of Florida on Tuesday, her dream of setting a record thwarted by storms, jellyfish stings, shark threats, hypothermia and swollen lips.

The swimmer was pulled from the water at 12:55 a.m., her crew reported, as a thunderstorm raged and winds and waves tossed support boats. Her team had previously tweeted that she came out of the water at 7:42 a.m., and offered no explanation for the change.

In a blog posting, crew member Candace Hogan wrote that Nyad angrily shook her head after being pulled from the water and planned to return to finish the swim after the storms subsided.

"When can I get back in?" Hogan quoted the swimmer as saying. "I want full transparency that I was out. But I have plenty left in me and I want to go on."

Nyad, who turns 63 on Wednesday, was making her third attempt since last summer to become the first person to cross the Florida Straits without a shark cage. She also made a failed try with a cage in 1978.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have observed for the first time how a laser penetrates dense, electron-rich plasma to generate ions. The process has applications for developing next generation particle accelerators and new cancer treatments.

The results, published online Aug. 19 in Nature Physics, also confirm predictions made more than 60 years ago about the fundamental physics of laser-plasma interaction. Plasmas dense with electrons normally reflect laser light like a mirror. But a strong laser can drive those electrons to near the speed of light, making the plasma transparent and accelerating the plasma ions.

“That idea has been met with some skepticism in the field,” said Rahul Shah of LANL’s plasma physics group. “We think that we’ve settled that controversy.”

The team, which also included researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany and Queens University in Belfast, UK, used the 200 trillion-watt short-pulse TRIDENT laser at Los Alamos National Laboratory to observe the transparency phenomenon at 50 femtosecond resolution. Until now, those dynamics have been witnessed only in computer simulations.

Los Alamos Middle School was evacuated Monday afternoon when a gas line was inadvertently punctured at approximately 1:10 p.m. in the construction zone.

Students and staff were immediately evacuated while the safety of the campus was assessed and students did return to their classrooms. There were no injuries and all students and staff were safe, the district announced this afternoon.

Middle school students attending a lecture at the high school Monday night did not seem too worried by the afternoon event.

"We were all evacuated and moved off into the field, so we were pretty far away from it," said eighth grade student June Cook.

Gerd Kunde, father of middle school student Zar Kunde, said he was not particulary worried for his son. In fact they both laughed off the event. "I guess the best part for him is he gets to sleep in tomorrow," said Gerd, noting the students will be reporting to school at 10 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. Tuesday.

A notice posted on the LAPS website states, "To ensure that all repairs on the punctured gas line in the construction area have been completed and a safety inspection has been conducted, there will be a TWO HOUR DELAY tomorrow, Tuesday, August 21, 2012 at Los Alamos Middle School.

U.S. drivers paid an average of $3.72 per gallon on Monday. That's the highest price ever on this date, according to auto club AAA, a shade above the $3.717 average on Aug. 20, 2008. A year ago, the average was $3.578.

More daily records are likely over the next few weeks. The national average could increase to $3.75 per gallon by Labor Day, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. By comparison, gas prices stayed below $3.70 in late August and early September in both 2008 and 2011.

Retail gasoline prices have gone up about 39 cents per gallon, or 12 percent, since hitting a low of $3.326 on July 2, according to AAA, OPIS and Wright Express. Kloza estimates that U.S. drivers are paying $149 million more each day for gas than in early July. That isn't what the sluggish economy needs, since any extra money that goes to fill gas tanks doesn't get spent at movie theaters or restaurants.

* ARROYO AND SMALL STREAM FLOOD ADVISORY FOR... NORTHERN LOS ALAMOS COUNTY IN NORTH CENTRAL NEW MEXICO SOUTHEASTERN RIO ARRIBA COUNTY IN NORTH CENTRAL NEW MEXICO NORTHEASTERN SANDOVAL COUNTY IN NORTH CENTRAL NEW MEXICO NORTHWESTERN SANTA FE COUNTY IN NORTH CENTRAL NEW MEXICO

* UNTIL 500 PM MDT

* AT 254 PM MDT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED HEAVY RAIN OVER SANTA CLARA CANYON. RADAR ESTIMATES AND SURFACE OBSERVATIONS INDICATE AROUND ONE HALF INCH OF RAIN HAS FALLEN WITH THESE STORMS IN LESS THAN 1 HOUR. THIS ACTIVITY IS MOVING QUICKLY EAST DOWN SANTA CLARA CANYON AROUND 20 MPH... THEREFORE THE FLOOD THREAT IS EXPECTED TO BE MINOR AT THIS TIME.

* STRONG FLOWS AND HIGH WATER LEVELS ARE EXPECTED IN ARROYOS... SMALL STREAMS AND OVER LOW WATER CROSSINGS. RAPID RUNOFF CAN ALSO BE EXPECTED IMMEDIATELY OVER AND DOWNSTREAM FROM WILDFIRE BURN SCARS.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

RUNOFF FROM RAINFALL WILL CAUSE ELEVATED WATER LEVELS WITHIN VULNERABLE DRAINAGES IN AND DOWNSTREAM OF THE LAS CONCHAS FIRE BURN AREA.